"Just Doing My Job" is a GREAT excuse, in the vast majority of cases, if you are a soldier, policeman, fireman, whatnot.
The idea that someone in one of those positions should, on a regular basis be ALLOWED to substitute their "judgment" for their job is absurd. Institutions like the police and army, HAVE to do their job, even (especially!) when they find that job distasteful or even mildly wrong, because if they didn't, if a private, or a beat cop, or whoever got to willy nilly substitue their judgment for that of their CO, or of the law as it stands, in ANYTHING but the most outrageous situations, those institutions would entirely cease to function, as institutions, and you would get not the rule of Law, but the rule of Thugs.
In VERY EXTREME cases, "just doing my job" doesn't cut it, post Nuremberg. But in run of the mill cases (and arresting someone for breaking the law, even a silly, or wrong (in the eyes of cop/soldier) law is very run of the mill) "just doing my job" is needful.
Terrible Advice. Stay entirely away from Slack, or Gentoo. Work with Red Hat, or, if you must, Debian.
The elitist will say "but you wont have the fine grained understanding of everything." But that is the point. You never will. And if you teach yourself that you have to know everything, then when you have to set up servers that are used, by organizations, in the real world, you are going to not know the tools that exist to help you. You will feel bound to "if I didnt do all of it, I can't understand it."
And either you will just do what you are told, and do a lousy job, or you will make a system that is near unuseable for general purpose.
Wow. Yet another ignorant boor ranting against religion, and while demonstrably WRONG, getting modded by other ignorants.
Listen, there are a LOT of reasons to criticize religion. Take your pick. Hateful violent groups, both internally and externally. In many cases religions encourage people to turn away from knowledge and discovery. Blah blah blah. There are many fruitful, and many flame-ish discussions you can have about religions. But, one of the things they have a very good track record on is maintaining the integrity of their key books.
So, for instance, there are fairly minor differences (generally several letters different) in the First 5 books of Moses, between the Bible that the Ethiopian Jews, and the rest of the Jews had, in spite of these groups having virtually no contact for several thousand years.
Now, the Ethiopians had in their cannon several books the rest of the Jewish world has as Apocrypha (I.E. they largely ignored). And, they did not have many later books, or traditions of the rest of the Jewish world.
Different groups have been funny about how they pick and choose which books get INTO (or taken out of) their cannons.
And there are a whole mess of interesting things that come up when a religion starts TRANSLATING texts.
But to just say that religions have had their primary texts re-written many times? Well that is just wrong. And wrong from a hateful disposition (assumed from tone) really doesn't belong in an exchange of knowledge. Propaganda? Sure, but an educated conversation? No. Shame on you, and anyone modding you up. If you want to decry the wrongs of religion, there really are enough out there to pick on. Disseminating untruths is really unnecessary.
I find it fascinating that you wrote your comment 6 minutes after the article went up, making your comment, which I would hope at +5 insightful would have a factual basis, merely presumptive. I hope people mod your name-calling down to -1 flamebait, which before any conversation has actually taken place, is all it is.
How does this get modded insightful when it is nothing but a troll? Seriously Mods, the article doesn't talk anywhere about a patent. This is just some guy trolling trying to start some argument about something wholly unrelated to the use/interest of using a regular camera to get a higher resolution photo. No-one but the poster mentioned patents.
That's a troll. Look at it, see its warts and throw it back under the bridge it came from.
I mod things down. I try to mostly mod up, but I also try to read. Largely I mod down when something is getting modded "insightful" when it is factually wrong. There are a couple of areas, that I have a reasonable amount of factual knowledge of, and a couple of areas where I have very strong personal biases. I try to mod in the first areas, and comment in the second.
Posts like the parent REALLY piss me off. Anyone who moderated him anything other than "TROLL" should... consider themselves.
The focus of the poster is to say "you dont matter". Not only that, but to say thathe is being RATIONAL in making that claim. An individual absolutely does matter in National Politics. Anyone who says otherwise needs to learn some math, and some basic economic theory.
Basically, the value of your vote is the total value of all votes, divided by the total number of all votes.
So to say your vote has a tiny Percentage of effect, so small as to be ALMOST un-noticable, is true. There are, in a national election, some 90 million voters. So your individual vote has a worth (and it actually is a little different than this because it does vary state by state) of ~ 1/90,000,000.
However, the Federal Budget is roughly (depending on what you take into account) some 3 TRILLION dollars. How that money get allocated is decided by the people you do or don't vote for.
So, just a rough number to think about, your vote is worth 3 TRILLION/ 90 MILLION. Roughly 33 THOUSAND dollars.
Now, you can argue about different things in that number, and whittle it up and down depending on how you look at it (entitlements, not being able to choose a canidate who exactly matches you, etc.). But to claim that it is RATIONAL to say your vote is worthless is just stupid.
Anyone making such a claim is being stupid (or simply trying to discourage voters, which the republican party does a lot of, actually), and certainly shouldn't be modded anything other than troll (the effect of people encouraging others not to vote is that there is a disproportinate representation of wealthy people voting. The wealthy, tend to believe that their vote counts. And they turn out. And Vote. And it does. This is one of the reasons that while the country tends to identify as Democrats (by close to a 60/40 margin) The VOTING population breaks about even. This is one of the reasons that we have an embargo on Cuba (they Cuban Ex-Pats almost all vote).
My experience was in the Israeli Army. I found they tended to separate people based on their IQ's, physical readiness (things like asthma, congenitive defects, diabetes), and some random eagerness rating. Mostly they only paid attention to the first two.
I eventually wound up in a rather peculiar combat unit. So, I cant talk about all the combat units there, but, in my unit, basically everyone had to try to get there. Our service itself sucked (8/8 guard duty), but had to be done.
Having been in an army that functions based on a draft, and having been none to eager to be in said army, Let me tell you, you get really good, competent, useful, smart, reliable soldiers, from a draft. (You also get lots of cannon fodder. But you get lots of EVERYTHING with a daft.)
The fact that they don't want to be there doesn't really come into play. The myth that it does, is just a lie that we rich kids tell to keep us out of the army. Soldiers in WWII were wholly competent. Vietnam gave us a draft of people (not rich enough)/(without the connections) to get out, and too stupid to keep a minimum GPA in university.
Look, the vast majority of smart, capable people will almost always look at an army and say "oh, wait, Getting Killed? For a little Bronze DooDad? No. I don't think so." And they will find something better to do (unless they have an inordinate amount of patriotism, or REALLY believe STRONGLY in the cause of the war. And even then, not so much). The only way you are going to get them into the army is to draft them. And really, for that to work, you have to have a strong draft, that doesn't leave people many outs (either because socially it is unacceptable (how many people went to the army and made out with another guy VS. Going to Canada?), or because it is virtually impossible to get out of.
Once you have that, you get all kinds of people, and you have to categorize them. Most armies already do this (you don't have many stupid/unmotivated people in any elite force. Cannon fodder exists, are poorly trained, and serve a roll). How willing a person is to die doesn't really factor in, here, either. Given a challenge, and given training, smart/motivated people WILL meet that challenge. They wont admit it to themselves, people are great at rationalizing stuff away. But once in the situation, being given the training, those same smart motivated people who would never willingly join the army will learn the skills of soldiering as well as the smart motivated people who are all Gung Ho. And they will learn them far far better than the Gung Ho unmotivated stupid people.
Surround a smart/capable person with other smart/capable people, even if they don't approve of the organization they are in, they will develop a bond with each other.
And, once you give someone a skill, however vile a skill it is. Well. We like to use our skills. We really do. And when we can frame that skill in terms of it being a good thing to do (save our buddies, bring democracy to the people, help the majority of the people in this town have running water, blah blah blah) well, that makes using my horrible skills all the more appealing. The end Vs. the Means. Cutting out a cancer from the society. Pick your metaphor. People are great at rationalizing.
This isn't to mention that the vast majority of skills the army imparts have nothing to do with combat. Tooth to Tail in the US (someone who knows more about the US army needs to correct me here) is something like 7:1. So most people in the army aren't involved in the combat side of things at all. Food prep, ordering supplies, cleaning camp, filling trucks with gas, etc. etc. etc.. (Cannon fodder aren't all in combat, ya know). Some of those things need smart, motivated people too (translation, reading local newspapers, listening to the radio, gathering Intel. Making sure you have the resources to feed 3000 people today etc.).
And another thing. The vast majority of people make really crappy combat soldiers. Take a well trained (but not battle exposed) soldier, and shoot at him, and most of them will cower. It takes someone INCREDIBLY disciplined/motivated/(the right kind of cerebral) to grab cover, stick their head up and start shooting back. Funny thing is that that combination of discipline/motivation/(right kind of cerebral) ALSO has almost nothing to do with how much you wanted to be in that situation, in the first place. Because ONCE YOU ARE THERE, if you want to live, the correct response is to shoot back. And
1.they pay above minimum wage - sure it's not huge but what do you expect to be paid for stacking boxes?
A living wage you stupid arrogant fuck. The fact that you and I were privileged with a higher education, or the fact that we were born smarter doesn't mean that the mere peasants should all live in poverty.
I have a good job programming computers. That doesn't mean I have any place disrespecting someone else's work. If there is a job that needs to get done, someone deserves to be paid a living wage to do it. If a company cant afford to pay a living wage to do it, it shouldn't get done. Belonging to a society which marginalizes and preys upon it's uneducated and stupid, is disgraceful. And that is exactly what you are doing with "what do you expect to be paid for {insert job here}".
I expect someone to be paid a living wage. A wage that will let them:
1. Pay for housing 2. Buy food 3. Get healthcare 4. Get heat 5. Support a child 6. Have enough time to spend with that child
$20k/year doesn't even buy rent and health insurance. For one person. Let alone someone trying to support a family.
Anyone who treats other people, who talks about other people who are doing useful work, that is necessary, like they are somehow not worthy of those simple things is either not thinking about what they are saying, or to me, mostly a vile person.
I expect a living wage. So should you. Shame on you or anyone modding you up with your hateful rhetoric.
Really, before calling someone a troll (I am not a patent lawyer, I do middleware development) you really should bother to learn about a topic you express yourself as though you cared about.
Now. Mostly you are just ignorant, and spewing your ignorance as fact. Which, in the course of these things, really annoys me. Close to everything you say is just wrong.
"To violate a patent something just has to have one element of the claim." No. To violate a patent something has to have all the elements of one claim. Same as for finding prior art. That is exactly what a claim is. It claims a right to a temporary monopoly on a method or apparatus the comprises all of the steps or features that it outlines. If something has all of those steps or features, then it is infringing, or can be used as prior art. If it has most, but not all of those steps or features, then it neither infringes, nor can be used as prior art.
Why is the legal system expensive? Because it requires experts. Much like why is getting a good piece of software expensive. Experts tend to be able to charge well for their time.
If you go and talk to almost any R&D section of almost any major corporation, you will find that they get lots of ideas from engineers that they don't file patents on, mostly because it is hella expensive to get a patent worldwide. IBM has a publication unit, where they just publish things they don't want to bother getting a patent on, because they don't want someone else to get a patent on it.
The one industry which really does spend time filing tens of terribly similar patents, is the pharmaceutical industry. They file over and over on different similar chemical compounds, as their current compounds lose protection and become generics. Look there are really problems with much of IP law in this country (and much of the world, really). I don't think that many people would say they are happy with the way the process handles the issue of "novel" (or obvious). But to just spew stuff which is wrong crying out ignorantly from your high horse, helps nothing.
I had a better response, but my browse froze, so I will be briefer.
Currently, nothing in the law requires me to use my patents. Interesting Idea. Hard to implement, but as you say, courts often look to intent. Interesting.
Obvious. I think formulating something as a problem, that hasn't up until then been recognized as a problem is often very creative. Once it is seen as a problem the solution may be obvious, that doesn't undercut the novelty.
That it wasn't done before isn't the test for novelty. Again, the patent office does consider obvious, it is just... Hard. Having a term so poorly defined when trying to argue with lawyers puts you on unsure footing.
Liked your comment, interesting well thought out. You don't like that stuff gets patented that seems to you obvious (neither do the courts, or patent agents). But, well, Still the problem with the definition.
Ok. I don't mean to sound snarky. But, a simple web browser is not prior art for the patent 7,117,443. Now, you refer to the title of the patent. A title, will, most of the time, be more general than the specifics that are claimed by the patent. When you start talking about the specific monopoly rights claimed by the patent, and what you need to find prior art for, to invalidate the patent, you need to look at the claims.
In general, the claims of a patent are structured with 1-4 (although sometimes many more) primary (independent) claims, identifiable (usually) by the phrase "What is claimed is a method..." or "what is claimed is an apparatus" or a description of the apparatus. Then there are subordinate (dependent) claims. Those are characterized by the phrase "the method of claim x" or "the apparatus of claim x" or a description of a method or apparatus of claim x, where x is the number of some claim.
The Independent claims are ussually worded to be as broad as possible, to cover as much IP space as possible. Then, the dependent claims get more and more specific. To find prior art for a patent, is essentially, to invalidate the claims of the patent.
Invalidating a claim, by prior art, means you have to find something which has, or some description of something which has, all the elements of that claim. If something has MOST of the elements of the claim, or something has some of the elements of that claim, or 2 things have all of the elements of the claim, but neither alone has all the elements of the claim, then you haven't invalidated the claim, by prior art (if you find 2 things which independently have all the elements of a claim, you may be able to argue obviousness, but that is an uphill battle once the patent has been issued. Not unwinnable, just harder.).
Now, in the case of patent 7,117,443, lets look at the first independent claim:
A graphical user interface for use in association with a network browser, comprising: a network browser window associated with a network browser for displaying Internet content associated with uniform resource locators (URLs) during network browsing; a plurality of identifiers adjacent to the window in which the content is displayed; wherein a user is allowed to pre-select one of the identifiers which is non-inclusive of any portion of the URLs; wherein, after the pre-selection, selected content associated with at least one of the URLs displayed during use of the network browser is correlated with the pre-selected identifier in a manner that is dependent on a selection of the pre-selected identifier which is non-inclusive of any portion of the URLs, and stored; wherein the user is allowed to manually enter the pre-selected identifier which is non-inclusive of any portion of the URLs.
So, what are the elements of this claim? 1. A gui to be used in network browsing that has:
a. A window for displaying network content associated with a URL (so far, just a web-browser)
b.a plurality of identifiers adjacent to the window in which the content is displayed
(one or more identifired, NEXT to the web browser) these identifiers allowing the user to:
i. select the identifier, and change the information in the browser in some manner, based on which identifier was chosen
now, why is this identifier interesteting, and what value is added (what is the USEFULNESS of the added identifier and its associated functionality?) does the identifier give, and how does that identifier, and pre-selecting it, thereby altering the content of the web browser in some manner prove useful? I don't really know I haven't bothered to read the whole patent. But a simple web browser doesn't have the added functionality of the pre-selectable, url independent identifiers which alter the presentation. So a simple web browser is NOT prior art.
Now, to invalidate the patent completely, you would have to go through all t
Man I feel like every time anyone says anything about patents we go through the same flame war.
!PATENTS ARE JUST FOR PATENT TROLLS! !PEOPLE JUST PATENT THE SAME NEW IDEA OVER AND OVER!
I wonder if I will get modded insightful or troll for responding.
It goes like this. There are rules for what can be patented. The patent system tries to keep out obvious patents, but there is something difficult about keeping out obvious, which I will get to shortly. You can't patent the same thing twice, though one thing may be in violation of many patents as it may incorporate different patents. You can patent improvements on an already existing idea, and this is a good thing.
Patents do reward novelty. As a society, we decided hundreds of years ago that there are different kinds of intellectual property, and we would like to protect them, in exchange for some public good. As these things go, the patent system with it's up to 17 year monopoly works fairly well, as opposed to the virtual unlimited range of copyright.
Most people who have issue with patents fall have one of 2 major issues:
1. You can go off and patent any old obvious thing. Some people who don't understand patents, or only read descriptions, and not claims (the description is the full disclosure, and is easier to read. It also isn't where the protection offered by the patent is defined, and will almost always talk about lots of prior art for a variety of legal reasons), might say that lots of patents are on something that already existed. To them I say briefly "show the prior art, the patent gets dismissed ASAP". Mostly though the prior art people talk about is one aspect of the patent.
OK. Obviousness. The patent office has some general guidelines as to what makes something "obvious" and the supreme court just threw a monkeywrench in the process (most people on slashdot would say in a good way) by saying "hey, obvious means, well OBVIOUS. And MAN that is OBVIOUS." But, here is the thing. Obvious is REALLY hard to define. Many new good ideas, which might seem trivial after the fact, but before the idea is described. Well... no-one thought of it. Try your hand at describing, in a legal or mathematical way (they are actually very similar) "obvious". Try making a formula, that you are comfortable applying to all ideas that describes "obvious". Unless you are someone who is against all Intellectual Property, you will find that difficult.
It isn't that people don't recognize there is a problem with obvious. Most people in Patent law do. But, there remains a problem of "how do you fix it"? Just bitching "man that is SOOOOO obvious", without taking the time to consider that "obviousness" is difficult to define, doesnt really help.
2. People patent things not to make them, but to charge others for using them. (Patent Trolls). I don't have that much to say. I don't like patent trolls. Again, I am not sure I know how to defend against them. See, saying "you don't get IP coverage unless you use your patent." Is also.... Problematic. Many patents are very expensive to use. I can patent something, and then work towards bringing it to market. Or I can patent a process, so I can be the only one to use it. After a fixed period of time my patent will expire. But really, the idea is that I have sole control of the idea, until my patent expires. The courts give someone who is making something a bit of an advantage over someone who isn't using it. But They consider the use of the Idea "owned" (not the idea itself, but the specific incarnations defined in the claims cant be used). Lets say I have a new Idea for the manufacture of Microchips. It is incremental, but very useful. Now I don't have the several hundred million dollars it takes to build a chip manufacturing facility. Are you going to say that because I don't have the money to implement my idea, Intel should be able to come and use it, without licensing it? Currently, if intel used it, without licensing it, the courts probabl
Comparing a product that I (may) produce, 4 months from now, to one that someone else, did produce, 4 months ago, in a rapidly changing market, to imply that "My chips are better than their chips" is lying.
To say "oh, selective truths to imply an untruth" isn't lying, is to play a stupid, and harmful semantic game.
This isn't a lynch mob. It is people pointing out that AMD is lying in their use of the "expected" format, to say something, which isn't true (our chips outperform their chips).
It is people saying "we are tired of people abusing our trust, and using bad numbers to imply things which are false".
To say "well, they aren't saying anything which isn't true, my future chips do outperform their former chips" is disingenuous. It may be, literally true, but the implications of that graph are misleading and therefore a lie.
This isn't helpful to some buyer, as it doens't compare two comparable items. My not yet released chips, are not comparable to their old chips. That you suggest something else, makes me wonder who you are writing for.
While it may be the case that marketers generally lie, that is something to be opposed.
When people lie, when people disseminate false information, it harms the public. That people do so a lot simply means that they are hurting the public a lot. To say "Well, everyone harms the public, why is it a big deal that this person is harming the public" is to say it is ok to harm the public.
It isn't. Lying, disseminating false information is harmful. If it is done a lot, that just means there is a lot of harm being done, and should be opposed by the public MORE strongly.
To become blase' about people who lie and mislead simply encourages people to lie and mislead. It means that someone who tells the truth wont actually be listened too, because "well everyone lies". Which makes it more difficult for someone who does tell the truth.
I would suggest you re-examine your values, and whoever modded you up should re-examine their values. Accepting lies as a Fait Accompli, and just assuming everyone lies, as opposed to holding liars accountable for the lies they tell, simply encourages liars, and makes it even harder for someone to tell the truth (which is often more expensive than lying), as they wont be believed anyway.
From everything I understand, ducking under your desk, and covering your neck, when you see a nuclear flash, is actually a good Idea.
Here is the thing. If you are in the total kill radius (varied depending on yield) you are gonna die. Pretty Fast.
However, there are a lot of people, outside the total kill area, who will see the flash. If you are far enough away to see the flash, instead of having it just vaporize you, then, well, the shock wave is gonna hit you pretty soon. Now, if you are far enough away, that the shock wave itself doesn't kill you (rapid change in pressure can really be a bitch), you can still be exposed to lots of flying glass (from windows exploding etc.) So, ducking under your desk (for cover) and covering your neck (so your hands, not arteries get sliced) is actually good advice. Stay there for a while, cause there will be a second, slightly lesser wave, coming shortly (30 seconds to 3 minutes) after the first. Seriously. If you have the time to get under the desk, doing so, may actually help
Honestly, from what I understand, what you just said, sounds like it makes sense, but doesn't.
Processor SPEED is a determined by the (maximum length of a normal pipeline stage (not including things like floating point handled by a separate unit or stalls etc.)) * (number of pipeline stages) . So, when you increase the transistor density, you are making the transistors smaller/faster. How many cores you put on a chip, shouldn't really effect the speed of the chip (unless you are making the pipeline stages longer, by putting on more cores -- which, shouldn't really be happening, unless the cores are designed to interact somehow, but I don't think they are, at that level).
So, yes, people are choosing to put more cores on a chip. But that, in and of itself, shouldn't make each core slower/faster. That is still determined by the longest pipeline stage. Which, all other things being equal, should get faster, as transistor density goes up (i.e. the longest pipeline stage has a certain number of transistors. Each transistor has a certain speed at which a signal propagates. As the transistors get smaller (and transistor density goes up) it takes less time for a signal to propagate through that transistor. Making that pipeline stage take less time. Making the chip faster).
That is, the extra density, in and of itself, should make the chips faster. The fact that you can now do more things, with those extra transistors, shouldn't slow the chip down.
Slashdot Mirror
"Just Doing My Job" is a GREAT excuse, in the vast majority of cases, if you are a soldier, policeman, fireman, whatnot.
The idea that someone in one of those positions should, on a regular basis be ALLOWED to substitute their "judgment" for their job is absurd. Institutions like the police and army, HAVE to do their job, even (especially!) when they find that job distasteful or even mildly wrong, because if they didn't, if a private, or a beat cop, or whoever got to willy nilly substitue their judgment for that of their CO, or of the law as it stands, in ANYTHING but the most outrageous situations, those institutions would entirely cease to function, as institutions, and you would get not the rule of Law, but the rule of Thugs.
In VERY EXTREME cases, "just doing my job" doesn't cut it, post Nuremberg. But in run of the mill cases (and arresting someone for breaking the law, even a silly, or wrong (in the eyes of cop/soldier) law is very run of the mill) "just doing my job" is needful.
Terrible Advice. Stay entirely away from Slack, or Gentoo. Work with Red Hat, or, if you must, Debian.
The elitist will say "but you wont have the fine grained understanding of everything." But that is the point. You never will. And if you teach yourself that you have to know everything, then when you have to set up servers that are used, by organizations, in the real world, you are going to not know the tools that exist to help you. You will feel bound to "if I didnt do all of it, I can't understand it."
And either you will just do what you are told, and do a lousy job, or you will make a system that is near unuseable for general purpose.
Learn your way through Red Hat, or Debian.
Wow. Yet another ignorant boor ranting against religion, and while demonstrably WRONG, getting modded by other ignorants.
Listen, there are a LOT of reasons to criticize religion. Take your pick. Hateful violent groups, both internally and externally. In many cases religions encourage people to turn away from knowledge and discovery. Blah blah blah. There are many fruitful, and many flame-ish discussions you can have about religions. But, one of the things they have a very good track record on is maintaining the integrity of their key books.
So, for instance, there are fairly minor differences (generally several letters different) in the First 5 books of Moses, between the Bible that the Ethiopian Jews, and the rest of the Jews had, in spite of these groups having virtually no contact for several thousand years.
Now, the Ethiopians had in their cannon several books the rest of the Jewish world has as Apocrypha (I.E. they largely ignored). And, they did not have many later books, or traditions of the rest of the Jewish world.
Different groups have been funny about how they pick and choose which books get INTO (or taken out of) their cannons.
And there are a whole mess of interesting things that come up when a religion starts TRANSLATING texts.
But to just say that religions have had their primary texts re-written many times? Well that is just wrong. And wrong from a hateful disposition (assumed from tone) really doesn't belong in an exchange of knowledge. Propaganda? Sure, but an educated conversation? No. Shame on you, and anyone modding you up. If you want to decry the wrongs of religion, there really are enough out there to pick on. Disseminating untruths is really unnecessary.
I find it fascinating that you wrote your comment 6 minutes after the article went up, making your comment, which I would hope at +5 insightful would have a factual basis, merely presumptive. I hope people mod your name-calling down to -1 flamebait, which before any conversation has actually taken place, is all it is.
Anyone know if there is a way to check if the first guy who modded GP Insightful was the same guy who modded (my own) parent "Troll"?
How does this get modded insightful when it is nothing but a troll? Seriously Mods, the article doesn't talk anywhere about a patent. This is just some guy trolling trying to start some argument about something wholly unrelated to the use/interest of using a regular camera to get a higher resolution photo. No-one but the poster mentioned patents.
That's a troll. Look at it, see its warts and throw it back under the bridge it came from.
I mod things down. I try to mostly mod up, but I also try to read. Largely I mod down when something is getting modded "insightful" when it is factually wrong. There are a couple of areas, that I have a reasonable amount of factual knowledge of, and a couple of areas where I have very strong personal biases. I try to mod in the first areas, and comment in the second.
Posts like the parent REALLY piss me off. Anyone who moderated him anything other than "TROLL" should... consider themselves.
The focus of the poster is to say "you dont matter". Not only that, but to say thathe is being RATIONAL in making that claim. An individual absolutely does matter in National Politics. Anyone who says otherwise needs to learn some math, and some basic economic theory.
Basically, the value of your vote is the total value of all votes, divided by the total number of all votes.
So to say your vote has a tiny Percentage of effect, so small as to be ALMOST un-noticable, is true. There are, in a national election, some 90 million voters. So your individual vote has a worth (and it actually is a little different than this because it does vary state by state) of ~ 1/90,000,000.
However, the Federal Budget is roughly (depending on what you take into account) some 3 TRILLION dollars. How that money get allocated is decided by the people you do or don't vote for.
So, just a rough number to think about, your vote is worth 3 TRILLION/ 90 MILLION. Roughly 33 THOUSAND dollars.
Now, you can argue about different things in that number, and whittle it up and down depending on how you look at it (entitlements, not being able to choose a canidate who exactly matches you, etc.). But to claim that it is RATIONAL to say your vote is worthless is just stupid.
Anyone making such a claim is being stupid (or simply trying to discourage voters, which the republican party does a lot of, actually), and certainly shouldn't be modded anything other than troll (the effect of people encouraging others not to vote is that there is a disproportinate representation of wealthy people voting. The wealthy, tend to believe that their vote counts. And they turn out. And Vote. And it does. This is one of the reasons that while the country tends to identify as Democrats (by close to a 60/40 margin) The VOTING population breaks about even. This is one of the reasons that we have an embargo on Cuba (they Cuban Ex-Pats almost all vote).
Which army were you in?
My experience was in the Israeli Army. I found they tended to separate people based on their IQ's, physical readiness (things like asthma, congenitive defects, diabetes), and some random eagerness rating. Mostly they only paid attention to the first two.
I eventually wound up in a rather peculiar combat unit. So, I cant talk about all the combat units there, but, in my unit, basically everyone had to try to get there. Our service itself sucked (8/8 guard duty), but had to be done.
Having been in an army that functions based on a draft, and having been none to eager to be in said army, Let me tell you, you get really good, competent, useful, smart, reliable soldiers, from a draft. (You also get lots of cannon fodder. But you get lots of EVERYTHING with a daft.)
The fact that they don't want to be there doesn't really come into play. The myth that it does, is just a lie that we rich kids tell to keep us out of the army. Soldiers in WWII were wholly competent. Vietnam gave us a draft of people (not rich enough)/(without the connections) to get out, and too stupid to keep a minimum GPA in university.
Look, the vast majority of smart, capable people will almost always look at an army and say "oh, wait, Getting Killed? For a little Bronze DooDad? No. I don't think so." And they will find something better to do (unless they have an inordinate amount of patriotism, or REALLY believe STRONGLY in the cause of the war. And even then, not so much). The only way you are going to get them into the army is to draft them. And really, for that to work, you have to have a strong draft, that doesn't leave people many outs (either because socially it is unacceptable (how many people went to the army and made out with another guy VS. Going to Canada?), or because it is virtually impossible to get out of.
Once you have that, you get all kinds of people, and you have to categorize them. Most armies already do this (you don't have many stupid/unmotivated people in any elite force. Cannon fodder exists, are poorly trained, and serve a roll). How willing a person is to die doesn't really factor in, here, either. Given a challenge, and given training, smart/motivated people WILL meet that challenge. They wont admit it to themselves, people are great at rationalizing stuff away. But once in the situation, being given the training, those same smart motivated people who would never willingly join the army will learn the skills of soldiering as well as the smart motivated people who are all Gung Ho. And they will learn them far far better than the Gung Ho unmotivated stupid people.
Surround a smart/capable person with other smart/capable people, even if they don't approve of the organization they are in, they will develop a bond with each other.
And, once you give someone a skill, however vile a skill it is. Well. We like to use our skills. We really do. And when we can frame that skill in terms of it being a good thing to do (save our buddies, bring democracy to the people, help the majority of the people in this town have running water, blah blah blah) well, that makes using my horrible skills all the more appealing. The end Vs. the Means. Cutting out a cancer from the society. Pick your metaphor. People are great at rationalizing.
This isn't to mention that the vast majority of skills the army imparts have nothing to do with combat. Tooth to Tail in the US (someone who knows more about the US army needs to correct me here) is something like 7:1. So most people in the army aren't involved in the combat side of things at all. Food prep, ordering supplies, cleaning camp, filling trucks with gas, etc. etc. etc.. (Cannon fodder aren't all in combat, ya know). Some of those things need smart, motivated people too (translation, reading local newspapers, listening to the radio, gathering Intel. Making sure you have the resources to feed 3000 people today etc.).
And another thing. The vast majority of people make really crappy combat soldiers. Take a well trained (but not battle exposed) soldier, and shoot at him, and most of them will cower. It takes someone INCREDIBLY disciplined/motivated/(the right kind of cerebral) to grab cover, stick their head up and start shooting back. Funny thing is that that combination of discipline/motivation/(right kind of cerebral) ALSO has almost nothing to do with how much you wanted to be in that situation, in the first place. Because ONCE YOU ARE THERE, if you want to live, the correct response is to shoot back. And
1.they pay above minimum wage - sure it's not huge but what do you expect to be paid for stacking boxes?
A living wage you stupid arrogant fuck. The fact that you and I were privileged with a higher education, or the fact that we were born smarter doesn't mean that the mere peasants should all live in poverty.
I have a good job programming computers. That doesn't mean I have any place disrespecting someone else's work. If there is a job that needs to get done, someone deserves to be paid a living wage to do it. If a company cant afford to pay a living wage to do it, it shouldn't get done. Belonging to a society which marginalizes and preys upon it's uneducated and stupid, is disgraceful. And that is exactly what you are doing with "what do you expect to be paid for {insert job here}".
I expect someone to be paid a living wage. A wage that will let them:
1. Pay for housing
2. Buy food
3. Get healthcare
4. Get heat
5. Support a child
6. Have enough time to spend with that child
$20k/year doesn't even buy rent and health insurance. For one person. Let alone someone trying to support a family.
Anyone who treats other people, who talks about other people who are doing useful work, that is necessary, like they are somehow not worthy of those simple things is either not thinking about what they are saying, or to me, mostly a vile person.
I expect a living wage. So should you. Shame on you or anyone modding you up with your hateful rhetoric.
How do you not lock a table, if you are using a transaction? Don't transactions implicitly lock tables?
2 knots an hour? for 300 m? I can do that with my legs....
Really, before calling someone a troll (I am not a patent lawyer, I do middleware development) you really should bother to learn about a topic you express yourself as though you cared about.
Now. Mostly you are just ignorant, and spewing your ignorance as fact. Which, in the course of these things, really annoys me. Close to everything you say is just wrong.
"To violate a patent something just has to have one element of the claim."
No. To violate a patent something has to have all the elements of one claim. Same as for finding prior art. That is exactly what a claim is. It claims a right to a temporary monopoly on a method or apparatus the comprises all of the steps or features that it outlines. If something has all of those steps or features, then it is infringing, or can be used as prior art. If it has most, but not all of those steps or features, then it neither infringes, nor can be used as prior art.
Why is the legal system expensive? Because it requires experts. Much like why is getting a good piece of software expensive. Experts tend to be able to charge well for their time.
If you go and talk to almost any R&D section of almost any major corporation, you will find that they get lots of ideas from engineers that they don't file patents on, mostly because it is hella expensive to get a patent worldwide. IBM has a publication unit, where they just publish things they don't want to bother getting a patent on, because they don't want someone else to get a patent on it.
The one industry which really does spend time filing tens of terribly similar patents, is the pharmaceutical industry. They file over and over on different similar chemical compounds, as their current compounds lose protection and become generics. Look there are really problems with much of IP law in this country (and much of the world, really). I don't think that many people would say they are happy with the way the process handles the issue of "novel" (or obvious). But to just spew stuff which is wrong crying out ignorantly from your high horse, helps nothing.
I had a better response, but my browse froze, so I will be briefer.
Currently, nothing in the law requires me to use my patents. Interesting Idea. Hard to implement, but as you say, courts often look to intent. Interesting.
Obvious. I think formulating something as a problem, that hasn't up until then been recognized as a problem is often very creative. Once it is seen as a problem the solution may be obvious, that doesn't undercut the novelty.
That it wasn't done before isn't the test for novelty. Again, the patent office does consider obvious, it is just... Hard. Having a term so poorly defined when trying to argue with lawyers puts you on unsure footing.
Liked your comment, interesting well thought out. You don't like that stuff gets patented that seems to you obvious (neither do the courts, or patent agents). But, well, Still the problem with the definition.
Ok. I don't mean to sound snarky. But, a simple web browser is not prior art for the patent 7,117,443. Now, you refer to the title of the patent. A title, will, most of the time, be more general than the specifics that are claimed by the patent. When you start talking about the specific monopoly rights claimed by the patent, and what you need to find prior art for, to invalidate the patent, you need to look at the claims.
In general, the claims of a patent are structured with 1-4 (although sometimes many more) primary (independent) claims, identifiable (usually) by the phrase "What is claimed is a method..." or "what is claimed is an apparatus" or a description of the apparatus. Then there are subordinate (dependent) claims. Those are characterized by the phrase "the method of claim x" or "the apparatus of claim x" or a description of a method or apparatus of claim x, where x is the number of some claim.
The Independent claims are ussually worded to be as broad as possible, to cover as much IP space as possible. Then, the dependent claims get more and more specific. To find prior art for a patent, is essentially, to invalidate the claims of the patent.
Invalidating a claim, by prior art, means you have to find something which has, or some description of something which has, all the elements of that claim. If something has MOST of the elements of the claim, or something has some of the elements of that claim, or 2 things have all of the elements of the claim, but neither alone has all the elements of the claim, then you haven't invalidated the claim, by prior art (if you find 2 things which independently have all the elements of a claim, you may be able to argue obviousness, but that is an uphill battle once the patent has been issued. Not unwinnable, just harder.).
Now, in the case of patent 7,117,443, lets look at the first independent claim:
A graphical user interface for use in association with a network browser, comprising: a network browser window associated with a network browser for displaying Internet content associated with uniform resource locators (URLs) during network browsing; a plurality of identifiers adjacent to the window in which the content is displayed; wherein a user is allowed to pre-select one of the identifiers which is non-inclusive of any portion of the URLs; wherein, after the pre-selection, selected content associated with at least one of the URLs displayed during use of the network browser is correlated with the pre-selected identifier in a manner that is dependent on a selection of the pre-selected identifier which is non-inclusive of any portion of the URLs, and stored; wherein the user is allowed to manually enter the pre-selected identifier which is non-inclusive of any portion of the URLs.
So, what are the elements of this claim?
1. A gui to be used in network browsing that has:
a. A window for displaying network content associated with a URL (so far, just a web-browser)
b.a plurality of identifiers adjacent to the window in which the content is displayed
(one or more identifired, NEXT to the web browser) these identifiers allowing the user to:
i. select the identifier, and change the information in the browser in some manner, based on which identifier was chosen
now, why is this identifier interesteting, and what value is added (what is the USEFULNESS of the added identifier and its associated functionality?) does the identifier give, and how does that identifier, and pre-selecting it, thereby altering the content of the web browser in some manner prove useful? I don't really know I haven't bothered to read the whole patent. But a simple web browser doesn't have the added functionality of the pre-selectable, url independent identifiers which alter the presentation. So a simple web browser is NOT prior art.
Now, to invalidate the patent completely, you would have to go through all t
Man I feel like every time anyone says anything about patents we go through the same flame war.
!PATENTS ARE JUST FOR PATENT TROLLS! !PEOPLE JUST PATENT THE SAME NEW IDEA OVER AND OVER!
I wonder if I will get modded insightful or troll for responding.
It goes like this. There are rules for what can be patented. The patent system tries to keep out obvious patents, but there is something difficult about keeping out obvious, which I will get to shortly. You can't patent the same thing twice, though one thing may be in violation of many patents as it may incorporate different patents. You can patent improvements on an already existing idea, and this is a good thing.
Patents do reward novelty. As a society, we decided hundreds of years ago that there are different kinds of intellectual property, and we would like to protect them, in exchange for some public good. As these things go, the patent system with it's up to 17 year monopoly works fairly well, as opposed to the virtual unlimited range of copyright.
Most people who have issue with patents fall have one of 2 major issues:
1. You can go off and patent any old obvious thing.
Some people who don't understand patents, or only read descriptions, and not claims (the description is the full disclosure, and is easier to read. It also isn't where the protection offered by the patent is defined, and will almost always talk about lots of prior art for a variety of legal reasons), might say that lots of patents are on something that already existed. To them I say briefly "show the prior art, the patent gets dismissed ASAP". Mostly though the prior art people talk about is one aspect of the patent.
OK. Obviousness. The patent office has some general guidelines as to what makes something "obvious" and the supreme court just threw a monkeywrench in the process (most people on slashdot would say in a good way) by saying "hey, obvious means, well OBVIOUS. And MAN that is OBVIOUS." But, here is the thing. Obvious is REALLY hard to define. Many new good ideas, which might seem trivial after the fact, but before the idea is described. Well... no-one thought of it. Try your hand at describing, in a legal or mathematical way (they are actually very similar) "obvious". Try making a formula, that you are comfortable applying to all ideas that describes "obvious". Unless you are someone who is against all Intellectual Property, you will find that difficult.
It isn't that people don't recognize there is a problem with obvious. Most people in Patent law do. But, there remains a problem of "how do you fix it"? Just bitching "man that is SOOOOO obvious", without taking the time to consider that "obviousness" is difficult to define, doesnt really help.
2. People patent things not to make them, but to charge others for using them. (Patent Trolls).
I don't have that much to say. I don't like patent trolls. Again, I am not sure I know how to defend against them. See, saying "you don't get IP coverage unless you use your patent." Is also.... Problematic. Many patents are very expensive to use. I can patent something, and then work towards bringing it to market. Or I can patent a process, so I can be the only one to use it. After a fixed period of time my patent will expire. But really, the idea is that I have sole control of the idea, until my patent expires. The courts give someone who is making something a bit of an advantage over someone who isn't using it. But They consider the use of the Idea "owned" (not the idea itself, but the specific incarnations defined in the claims cant be used). Lets say I have a new Idea for the manufacture of Microchips. It is incremental, but very useful. Now I don't have the several hundred million dollars it takes to build a chip manufacturing facility. Are you going to say that because I don't have the money to implement my idea, Intel should be able to come and use it, without licensing it? Currently, if intel used it, without licensing it, the courts probabl
Comparing a product that I (may) produce, 4 months from now, to one that someone else, did produce, 4 months ago, in a rapidly changing market, to imply that "My chips are better than their chips" is lying.
To say "oh, selective truths to imply an untruth" isn't lying, is to play a stupid, and harmful semantic game.
This isn't a lynch mob. It is people pointing out that AMD is lying in their use of the "expected" format, to say something, which isn't true (our chips outperform their chips).
It is people saying "we are tired of people abusing our trust, and using bad numbers to imply things which are false".
To say "well, they aren't saying anything which isn't true, my future chips do outperform their former chips" is disingenuous. It may be, literally true, but the implications of that graph are misleading and therefore a lie.
This isn't helpful to some buyer, as it doens't compare two comparable items. My not yet released chips, are not comparable to their old chips. That you suggest something else, makes me wonder who you are writing for.
The point is, someone is lying.
While it may be the case that marketers generally lie, that is something to be opposed.
When people lie, when people disseminate false information, it harms the public. That people do so a lot simply means that they are hurting the public a lot. To say "Well, everyone harms the public, why is it a big deal that this person is harming the public" is to say it is ok to harm the public.
It isn't. Lying, disseminating false information is harmful. If it is done a lot, that just means there is a lot of harm being done, and should be opposed by the public MORE strongly.
To become blase' about people who lie and mislead simply encourages people to lie and mislead. It means that someone who tells the truth wont actually be listened too, because "well everyone lies". Which makes it more difficult for someone who does tell the truth.
I would suggest you re-examine your values, and whoever modded you up should re-examine their values. Accepting lies as a Fait Accompli, and just assuming everyone lies, as opposed to holding liars accountable for the lies they tell, simply encourages liars, and makes it even harder for someone to tell the truth (which is often more expensive than lying), as they wont be believed anyway.
Sorry, wrong article...
you mean Hitler?
forget it....
From everything I understand, ducking under your desk, and covering your neck, when you see a nuclear flash, is actually a good Idea.
Here is the thing. If you are in the total kill radius (varied depending on yield) you are gonna die. Pretty Fast.
However, there are a lot of people, outside the total kill area, who will see the flash. If you are far enough away to see the flash, instead of having it just vaporize you, then, well, the shock wave is gonna hit you pretty soon. Now, if you are far enough away, that the shock wave itself doesn't kill you (rapid change in pressure can really be a bitch), you can still be exposed to lots of flying glass (from windows exploding etc.) So, ducking under your desk (for cover) and covering your neck (so your hands, not arteries get sliced) is actually good advice. Stay there for a while, cause there will be a second, slightly lesser wave, coming shortly (30 seconds to 3 minutes) after the first. Seriously. If you have the time to get under the desk, doing so, may actually help
Honestly, from what I understand, what you just said, sounds like it makes sense, but doesn't.
Processor SPEED is a determined by the (maximum length of a normal pipeline stage (not including things like floating point handled by a separate unit or stalls etc.)) * (number of pipeline stages) . So, when you increase the transistor density, you are making the transistors smaller/faster. How many cores you put on a chip, shouldn't really effect the speed of the chip (unless you are making the pipeline stages longer, by putting on more cores -- which, shouldn't really be happening, unless the cores are designed to interact somehow, but I don't think they are, at that level).
So, yes, people are choosing to put more cores on a chip. But that, in and of itself, shouldn't make each core slower/faster. That is still determined by the longest pipeline stage. Which, all other things being equal, should get faster, as transistor density goes up (i.e. the longest pipeline stage has a certain number of transistors. Each transistor has a certain speed at which a signal propagates. As the transistors get smaller (and transistor density goes up) it takes less time for a signal to propagate through that transistor. Making that pipeline stage take less time. Making the chip faster).
That is, the extra density, in and of itself, should make the chips faster. The fact that you can now do more things, with those extra transistors, shouldn't slow the chip down.